Sharing Economy

Prof. Nitzan Geslevich Packin

This course examines the sharing economy, where digital platforms facilitate peer-to-peer access to goods, services, and capital across various sectors, including housing, transportation, labor, and finance. It examines how this model is transforming economic participation, displacing traditional intermediaries, and presenting new regulatory and ethical challenges.

Topics include ride-hailing, short-term rentals, freelance labor, peer-to-peer lending, and crowdinvesting, as well as enabling technologies like mobile apps, open banking interfaces, algorithmic matching, and reputation systems. The course also covers trading apps that claim to democratize finance, as well as the use of algorithmic management to control gig work and service delivery. Students will engage with legal and policy questions involving worker classification, data governance, consumer protection, and market concentration. The course further considers the public health and economic impacts of COVID-19, which exposed platform vulnerabilities and accelerated digital adoption across key sectors.

Semester A (Fall Semester)